Regional body faces scrutiny over soaring project costs, lack of transparency
Deep concerns raised by Surrey board directors about Metro Vancouver paint a troubling portrait of an organization that lacks expertise, fails to consult, and forces the region’s officials to make multibillion-dollar decisions affecting taxpayers without adequate information.
It identifies as specific pain points two Metro Vancouver projects, the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant in North Vancouver and the looming Iona Island Wastewater Treatment Plant in Richmond, and disparages how they are among the seven top projects reporting directly into Chief Administrative Officer Jerry Dobrovolny “with no independent third-party engineering and financial auditor to provide transparency, accountability and evaluate cost-benefit design-based principles/assumptions.
“I believe there must be additional board oversight and decisions made on the costing of these Major Capital projects at a minimum,” Kooner wrote. The provincial government, which created Metro Vancouver as a corporate entity, has so far declined publicly to involve itself, whether to launch a fuller-fledged inquiry into costs, provide additional funds to defray significant property tax levies for the North Shore plant, or to take back the responsibilities of the operation, which at the moment is overseeing some 300 infrastructural projects.
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